Product mix decisions with complete shipment and multiple physical resources as constraints

Over the last three decades, the theory of constraints (TOCs) has emerged as a complete management philosophy. Fox extended the application of TOC to the product mix situations and suggested the theory of constraints heuristics (TOChs). This algorithm was applicable to single constraint situations only and later, Fredendall and Lea (1997) modified it to revised theory of constraints heuristics (RTOChs) for multiple constraint situations. Neither of these heuristics is applicable to the situations where complete shipment to different customers is an additional constraint over and above the physical constraints. In this paper, some modifications are suggested in RTOCh proposed by Fredendall and Lea (1997). By applying these modifications, the heuristics can be used in the complete shipment constraint situations. The working of this modified heuristics has been explained by taking two illustrative examples. By comparing the results obtained from the proposed heuristics with those obtained from the integer linear programming model, it has been proven that the heuristics give satisfactory results. Since the proposed heuristics provides the sequence of manufacturing, the effect of contingencies on actual output will be minimum. Ease of usage and better actual output are the advantages of proposed heuristic over integer linear programming.